Unusually warm for Sept 30 - 89F degrees. Uncomfortably warm inside the dome, the crowd on the main floor was cooled off with fire hoses.

Opening act Eddie Money was well received. Not so for the Clash who went on at 9pm by which time the crowd was ready for the Who. The Clash played
through a chorus of boos for the whole set.

Who came on stage at 10:45pm, played for 2hrs 45 minutes. House lights remained on for opening number Substitute and into the second song,
Can't Explain. Video screen did not start up right away either.

Dave Heatherly

Two items can be added to this:

Attendees in the stands began to jump down to the main floor to chants of do it from the rest of the crowd. After overwhelming security several times security began to pick individuals to pursue prior to the onslaught and grabbed those individuals many of whom were pummeled prior to be removed from the Silverdome.

Also the stage set up for that tour featured a large WHO with the stage below the open space in the letter H and a jumbotron above. This became the centerold for the double album Who's Last.

Matthew Chaplin

They sold 75,000 GA tickets and of that approximately 10,000 were for the floor. Estimates put somewhere about 20,000 people on the floor. I remember waves of people jumping from the lower bowl onto the floor - about 30 or 40 people would mass up in front of the security - figuring quite rightly they couldn't catch us all. Though I did see the security purposely break someone's arm when they caught them.

Eddie Money was by all accounts well received unfortunately for The Clash the same could not be said. I remember they didn't play Train in Vain (off London Calling) and stuck closely to Combat Rock which was not well known at the time. When they got to the "Should I Stay or Should I Go" chorus of the same song a vast majority of the crowd was yelling "GO!, GO!, GO!" I recall my buddy quipping that they had collected more garbage that night than the City of Pontiac because people were throwing various items (batteries, garbage, bottles, etc.) at The Clash. I don't think they played their full set.

The crowd was at a fever pitch by the time The Who hit the stage. As noted above the house lights were up into ICE.

The Who put on a spirited show that night - one quite frankly better than the Silverdome deserved. They were on point and firing on all cylinders. As noted the security was out of hand (I also saw a guy who had been slashed by a knife from his ear to his mouth), the crowd was out of hand (someone climbed up to the Teflon roof and cut out a one square foot section as a souvenir), the fights and people throwing things at the bands. I mentioned the garbage The Clash collected at least people were only throwing joints at The Who. In face at one point Pete quipped, "Why can't you people throw things up here we can use? We're a clean band now. How about a microwave or a Buick or something?" Also, the Silverdome was an awful music venue. The Who played there four times because it was the only Detroit area stadium for music. But my God did the sound suck there. It was big (80,000 seats not counting the floor) and the sound sort of just bounced around the place and off the roof.

The standout songs that night to me were: The Punk and The Godfather, 5:15, WGFA and Magic Bus. I really liked Magic Bus that night which is kinda of funny as I emulated John Entwistle later in life and grew to hate that song. But that night? It truly was a Magic Bus.

About the Concert Guide

The Who Concert Guide tells the story of The Who live on stage. This gigographie
will focus on The Who's, Roger Daltrey's, John Entwistle's and Pete Townshend's
live performance from past to present. The project started in April 1996.
Today we have infos about more than 2150 shows. So ... read on ... and on ... and on ... and on ...